Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 review – inept game-based horror is one of the year’s worst

The box office smash of Halloween 2023 gets a shoddily made follow-up written carelessly and devoid of an actual ending The ghost-possessed family-restaurant animatronics of the Five Nights at Freddy ’s movies lumber around with such heavy-footed gaucherie that it’s hard to figure out how they’re physically able to move from place to place as quickly as they’d need to for a proper killing spree. In what could be mistaken for a case of form following function, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 moves the exact same way. It’s so ostentatiously awkward that it constantly draws attention to its inept imitations of actions that other movies, even bad ones, intuitively understand – like making transitions between scenes or locations. For example, when faced with the need to isolate a mean science teacher (Wayne Knight) so that he can be vengefully murdered by one of the aforementioned animatronics, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 bafflingly cuts to him walking down a school hallway (during a science fair...

Old Man review – wilderness horror as cranky codger faces off with mysterious hiker

Lucky McKee’s psychological horror starring Stephen Lang feels inauthentic and flat

Here is an unexceptional psychological horror from director Lucky McKee that feels dated and clunky, with some fairly ropey acting – or maybe that is down to the shaky lines put into the actors’ mouths. It only comes alive after a freaky plot twist at the end, but even that left the hairs on the back of my neck unprickled, the carpet under my feet unpulled.

Stephen Lang plays a cranky codger known only as Old Man who lives in the remote Smoky Mountains wilderness. The set design of his wooden cabin is distractingly inauthentic; it’s like an Ikea store display that has been done up in hicksville chic. Old Man has woken up in a filthy temper; first his dog, Rascal, pees on the floor, and then there is a knock at the door. Old Man shoves his shotgun into the face of the stranger standing outside. “Do as I say, or you’ll end up like her,” he growls, jabbing the gun at a stuffed wildcat on the wall.

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